American character

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The love of wealth is therefore to be traced, as either a principal or accessory motive, at the bottom of all that the Americans do; this gives to all their passions a sort of family likeness.

Alexis de Tocqueville

Democracy in America

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Original Citation

Tocqueville, Alexis De. De La Democratie en Amerique [Democracy in America]. Vol. 2, London: Saunders and Otley, 1840, bk. 3. ch. 17.

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Current Citation

Tocqueville, Alexis De. Democracy in America: The Complete and Unabridged Volumes I and II, translated by Henry Reeve. Bantam Classics, 2000, vol. 2, bk. 3. ch. 17.

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Americans traditionally love to fight. All real Americans love the sting of battle.

Patton

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Patton. Directed by Franklin J. Schaffner. 20th Century Fox, 1969.

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The chief business of the American people is business.

Calvin Coolidge

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Coolidge, Calvin. "The Press Under a Free Government." American Society of Newspaper Editors meeting. 17 Jan. 1925, Washington, DC, USA.

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A tough but nervous, tenacious but restless race; materially ambitious, yet prone to introspection, and subject to waves of religious emotion... A race whose typical member is eternally torn between a passion for righteousness and a desire to get on in the world.

Samuel Eliot Morison

On Americans, specifically "Yankees".

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Morison, Samuel Eliot. The Maritime History of Massachusetts 1783-1860. Houghton Mifflin Company, 1921, ch. 2.

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They have all a lively faith in the perfectibility of man, they judge that the diffusion of knowledge must necessarily be advantageous, and the consequences of ignorance fatal; they all consider society as a body in a state of improvement, humanity as a changing scene, in which nothing is, or ought to be, permanent; and they admit that what appears to them today to be good, may be superseded by something better tomorrow.

Alexis de Tocqueville

Democracy in America

On Americans.

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Original Citation

Tocqueville, Alexis De. De La Democratie en Amerique [Democracy in America]. Vol. 1, London: Saunders and Otley, 1835, ch. 18, pt. 6.

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Current Citation

Tocqueville, Alexis De. Democracy in America: The Complete and Unabridged Volumes I and II, translated by Henry Reeve. Bantam Classics, 2000, vol. 1, ch. 18, pt. 6.

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For this is what America is all about. It is the uncrossed desert and the unclimbed ridge. It is the star that is not reached and the harvest that's sleeping in the unplowed ground. Is our world gone? We say farewell. Is a new world coming? We welcome it, and we will bend it to the hopes of man.

Lyndon B. Johnson

Second Inaugural Address of Lyndon Baines Johnson

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Johnson, Lyndon B. "Second Inaugural Address." 20 Jan. 1965, East Portico, US Capitol Building, Washington, DC, USA.

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The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer.

D.H. Lawrence

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Lawrence, D.H. Studies in Classic American Literature. Thomas Seltzer, 1923, ch. 5.

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I am going to consume all of this at the same time because I am a free American.

Ron Swanson

Parks and Recreation

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"Sweetums." Parks and Recreation, written by Greg Daniels and Michael Schur and Alan Yang, directed by Dean Holland, season 2, episode 15, Deedle-Dee Productions and Fremulon, 2010.

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If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose—because it contains all the others—the fact that they were the people who created the phrase 'to make money.' No other language or nation had ever used these words before... Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created.

Ayn Rand

Atlas Shrugged

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Rand, Ayn. Atlas Shrugged. Random House, 1957, pt. 2, ch. 2.

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It was a creed written into the founding documents that declared the destiny of a nation: Yes, we can. It was whispered by slaves and abolitionists as they blazed a trail towards freedom through the darkest of nights. Yes, we can. It was sung by immigrants as they struck out from distant shores and pioneers who pushed westward against an unforgiving wilderness. Yes, we can. It was the call of workers who organized, women who reached for the ballot, a president who chose the moon as our new frontier, and a king who took us to the mountaintop and pointed the way to the promised land.

Barack Obama

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Obama, Barack. Remarks on New Hampshire primary night. New Hampshire Democratic presidential primary. 8 Jan. 2008, Nashua, NH, USA.

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I have never been more struck by the good sense and the practical judgment of the Americans than in the manner in which they elude the numberless difficulties resulting from their Federal Constitution.

Alexis de Tocqueville

Democracy in America

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Original Citation

Tocqueville, Alexis De. De La Democratie en Amerique [Democracy in America]. Vol. 1, London: Saunders and Otley, 1835, ch. 8, pt. 5.

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Current Citation

Tocqueville, Alexis De. Democracy in America: The Complete and Unabridged Volumes I and II, translated by Henry Reeve. Bantam Classics, 2000, vol. 1, ch. 8, pt. 5.

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